Something about the $667 repair bill that Enterprise Rent-A-Car sent Jerry Bitting looked suspicious to him.

For starters, the car didn’t appear to be the one that Bitting had rented. The dates when the damage occurred didn’t match the dates he had driven the Mazda 3. The pictures were taken weeks after he’d returned the car. Questions to Enterprise’s damage-recovery unit, asking for an explanation of the inconsistencies, were met with silence.

“I told them that the damages were not there when I picked up the car or dropped it off,” Bitting says.

Bitting believed that he was being billed for someone else’s damage. He filed a complaint with the Better Business Bureau, which at the time gave the car-rental company a rating of F, he says. Within days, Enterprise sent him a letter threatening to turn over the case to a collection agency.

Complaints about allegedly bogus damage claims appear to be a growing problem. I receive several requests for help every week. A series of reports implicating Budget Rent A Car in a scheme to systematically and intentionally defraud customers by overcharging for minor repairs that sometimes aren’t even done is making headlines in Canada.

British Columbia’s minister of justice and attorney general, Shirley Bond, is reportedly investigating allegations of fraud at several Budget locations.

Bitting, for his part, was undeterred by his setbacks. He contacted the Virginia attorney general’s office and also asked me to help. Enterprise’s claim, he said, was ridiculous and filled with inconsistencies and cryptic notes that he couldn’t understand.

I asked Enterprise to review his bill, and it dropped the claim against him.

Cases such as Bitting’s, Enterprise argues, are usually reversed as a gesture of goodwill, not because they are invalid. But there’s a growing consensus among industry-watchers that closing damage claims to avoid extra scrutiny may not be enough.

Sharon Faulkner, executive director of the American Car Rental Association, a trade group for the industry, says her constituents are “obviously concerned” about the Canadian investigation.

The problem may not be the car-rental industry’s current damage-recovery practices. After all, it has had years to fine-tune its claims process, and it’s difficult to imagine this kind of fraud being carried out at a chainwide level, with senior management’s blessing.

Rather, two other issues could broadside the industry. The first is how employees are trained. One former Budget employee told Canadian broadcast network CBC that he’d been told to inspect vehicles from top to bottom and report any damage to managers no matter how minuscule, starting with the windshield.

Current and former employees are aware that their business model is fragile. Take away the expensive insurance, fuel purchase options, navigation systems and aggressive pursuit of all damage to the vehicles, and your location could start hemorrhaging money. So it isn’t necessarily what the rental companies say about damages that could be damning — it’s what it says to the employees about them.

The second problem: People never forget. If you’ve been dinged for damage that didn’t exist when you returned your vehicle, you could spend years pursuing justice.

Christopher Elliott is the ombudsman for National Geographic Traveler.

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About Christopher Elliott

Christopher Elliott is the ombudsman for National Geographic Traveler magazine. Read more travel tips at www.elliott.org